Turu tänav (Turg)

Market. After Keskturg, Tallinn’s central market, some 150 m to the east. Name used in three configurations: 1) tänav, whose residents were initially located by liival, kitsas tänavas, or ‘in a narrow street on the sand’, indicating the extent of Tallinn sands, here about 2 km from the shore, then by Salzmann-Dörptsche Straße (Saltzmann-Tartu road, 1825, after a local councillor), moving later to various herring-based names: Heringstraße (1865); Heeringi (1885); Heeringa (1908-1948) and even, at one stage, Подселедочная (Podseledochnaya, under the [sign of the] herring) which Kivi suggests was a herring store cum tavern. Turu is a loan word, ultimately from Old East Slavic *tъrgъ (tǔrgǔ) apparently via Russian (but hard to trace) to old Swedish, torgh>torg, and thence to Finnish tori and the Finnish town of Turku, the genitive of which is Turun (see Kauba). Anagram of Rutu. See also Turu põik and Turu plats.